Pages

Archives

Rah-rah

Mike Redmond of the Indianapolis Business Journal captures perfectly the "civic rah-rah" needed to initiate and sustain a Super Duper Bowl bid:

The whole community, huh? Maybe they had a referendum. Was it on the back of the primary ballot? Or did they take a survey? If they did, they forgot to call me.

Oh, I know. They went door-to-door, didn't they? I must have been upstairs when they knocked.

Excuse me for getting all technical about it, but it seems to me you can't say the entire community wants something unless you first ask the entire community.

But that's how it is with the civic rah-rah.

It's the same class of rah-rah that sells every big, expensive idea that's going to tie up traffic and send restaurant prices to the moon by telling us it's what Indianapolis must have to be a World Class City.

This is an old gimmick. The Pan Am Games were going to make us a World Class City. The Hoosier Dome, as it was called in the olden days, was going to make us a World Class City. The U.S. Grand Prix was going to make us a World Class City. Well, we had 'em. Aren't we World Class yet?

And it hasn't just been sports. It goes for goofy art installations. Buildings, too. I'm pretty sure they said it about Union Station. Then again, that might have been Circle Centre mall (which even uses the World Class spelling for “Center”). Besides, everybody knows you can't be World Class without a Cinnabon in your downtown.

In all these years, nobody has ever been able to define World Class City to my satisfaction. Are we talking fabled cities like London, Paris, and Omaha? Bustling cities that crackle with energy like Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sarasota (before 4:30 p.m.)? Cosmopolitan centers like New York, Toronto and Kendallville?

As he points out, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have also never hosted a Super Bowl. Wonder why? Could it be because they're not warm-weather destinations in winter? Residents of those other cities, though, probably don't have quite the self-esteem problems of Hoosies. Give us a Super Bowl, please, please, please, to prove we're worthy.